Fool's Gold (16 page)

Bugger,
thought Firkin as he started off after the crowd.
This is about to go as well as that time I put a ferret in my britches.

Mattrax chewed upon his dinner disconsolately. The meat they had brought him tasted funny. Maybe it was time to bring back the position of official taster once more. They never seemed to work out, though. He always got peckish while waiting for his cow, and ended up eating them.

He shifted irritably on his pile of gold, sending coins skittering in rolling cascades. He picked up a crown with a single claw. The gold was pure, thick, worked into a design so fine that in places the metal had the texture of paper. It was a technique from a lost age. He thought he had pried it from some scholars who themselves had scavenged the thing from the tomb of a Vinland king. Some lunatic who had dedicated himself and his kingdom to Barph. Some fool willing to dedicate himself to a life of indulgence and pleasure.

Mattrax breathed out and the crown melted in the corona of his fire. He smeared the dripping slag on the wall of his cave. He was thinking of coating the whole thing in gold. The stone was ominous, yes, but dreary too. It would be glorious to have a golden cave. He bet stupid Dathrax didn't have a golden cave. Dathrax—living in the middle of a lake. He would have gold and Dathrax would have mold. He snorted at the thought.

Still, melting his own gold was a lot of work. Maybe he'd reintroduce slavery. The Consortium had ruled against it. One of their annual meetings at the Hallows' Mouth volcano. Something to do with riling up the masses. But there were no masses up here. Just idiots, like those ones swilling around his cave earlier. Gods, they had been annoying. And his ridiculous, pointless guards. Just standing there, dying. Did he have to do everything himself?

He stifled a yawn. He was feeling unexpectedly sleepy. Probably all the murder earlier. Idiot guards exhausting him like that.

He took another bite of his meal. What was wrong with this meat? He took a few more experimental mouthfuls, trying to identify the flavor. Were they trying to spice his meat now? Gods.

He contemplated leaving it where it was. But he'd eaten three of the guards earlier and plate mail always upset his digestion. Some simple cow meat would be good for him.

He gave into another yawn, and then settled in to chow down.

While he had never given it too much thought, Will had always had the impression that he could describe himself as a strong-willed man. Stubborn, his mother had called it. And his father. And both Albor and Dunstan, at least every other day working on the farm. But Will just understood he was a man who knew his own mind, and who had the strength of resolve to see his plans through.

That said, there was only so long one could hide out in a latrine at Castle Mattrax. Willpower could last only so long against that stench.

He slipped out into the keep grounds. The sun had descended behind the peaks of the mountains, and night had mercifully fallen. In the safety of shadows and starlight, he should be able to slip out of the castle and…

And…?

He honestly wasn't sure. The plan was clearly in violent disarray. Maybe he could reconnect with Quirk. Maybe he could find Balur or Firkin. Or at least their grave markers.

Gods…

He shook his head. He had enough concerns to deal with in the present moment, without trying to work out the ones he'd have to confront in the future. Those would simply have to form an orderly queue and wait their turn.

He slunk slowly along the wall leading to the first of the inner gates, trying to plot out a route using half-remembered maps outlined in half-remembered conversations with Firkin half a life ago.

The problem, he concluded, was that the castle was pressed up against a mountain on three sides. It was distinctly lacking in side doors. And, as his entry to the castle had shown, the one door that did exist was guarded by arseholes.

He needed a good cover story. Some sort of urgent task that he had been sent upon. Something that even one of the spite-filled, gutter-minded guards could believe in.

He sighed. This castle was supposed to be difficult to break
into,
not
out of
.

“Hey! Hey, you! I said hey!”

Will froze, and instantly regretted it. If panic hadn't seized him for just that fraction of a second perhaps he could have pretended that he hadn't heard, that he hadn't understood. Perhaps when he broke into a run he could have made a half-believable excuse. But now all he could do was stumble five miserable yards before he was intercepted.

The guard was running as he approached. He arrived panting, then doubled over, armor clanking as he sucked air in and out.

“Hey,” he said, still panting. “I mean, hi. That is hello.” He doubled over again, sucked air. “Sorry, running in this stuff…” He gestured at the armor with his hand. “Does me in every time.”

“Erm…” Will said, feeling that he had some requisite part to play in the conversation, but not really knowing what it was, now that it apparently wasn't screaming and running for his life.

“Sorry,” said the soldier. “Always horrible at introductions. General shortcoming in life. I think I do all right once I get past them, but they're always sort of the inciting moment that I need to get past. So then I don't get to the bit that's past them, because I'm stuck on them. And it's horribly awkward.” He looked up, looked around. “Sort of like this actually.”

“I'm… sorry?” Will tried. He wished he knew magic like Quirk. Something that could open up a hole in the ground and swallow him.

“Oh don't be. Not your problem at all. Totally mine,” said the guard. And then, “Oh bugger, I forgot the bit where I tell you my name. I told you I'm horrible at these things.”

It was slowly dawning on Will that there was something horribly familiar about this man.

“I'm Bevvan,” said the guard. “You're Will, right?”

Will's stomach lurched. Then it lurched again. Then it did a rather complicated gymnastic routine for good measure. Will tasted his own bile, which apparently preferred to take more of a bystander role in the back of his throat during such performances.

Will opened his mouth to fill in his part of the conversation again. He was pretty sure that some stringent denials went here. Instead all that came out was a wheezing, croaking sound, like the death wail of a particularly flatulent frog.

“Probably don't remember me.” Bevvan the guard shook his head sadly. “I don't have one of those memorable faces. At least that's what my wife's always telling me. She says it's sort of plain and doughy and she wants to forget it.” He laughed. “She's a funny woman. But yes, I was one of the guards that came to your farm the other day. Had to take your farm away. That whole clerical misunderstanding.”

Oh gods. Oh gods why was he hated by the heavens so much? Had he forgotten to pour a libation one day? Had he blasphemed one time too many?

“No.” His tongue felt like a stick of wood in his mouth. He forced the word out around it.

“Yes!” said Bevvan, all smiles and joviality. “And now you're here! I'm so glad you landed on your feet. I mean, that was horrible luck about the farm. It looked like debtors' jail for you for sure, I thought. But here you are all safe and sound.”

Muscles in Will's face were starting to twitch. Some expression had to be formed, but each part of his anatomy seemed to have its own idea about which one. His eyebrows were jerked back and forth, his mouth curled and sneered.

Bevvan grinned in much the same way as a man would, should his brains be replaced by a jug of milk.

Then abruptly, he looked over Will's shoulder and shouted, “Hey, Joeth! Joeth! Come and look who it is! It's Will!”

The time for filling in gaps in the conversation had clearly come and gone at this point, and Will had failed spectacularly at that. Now his options became, in some respects, even simpler. He had to flee. To simply put one leg in front of the other and push.

He placed his right leg in front of his left. He bent his knee—

Bevvan landed a meaty arm upon his shoulder, preparing to spin him around to meet Joeth as he strode toward them. On the point of rapid departure, Will was decidedly off-balance. Instead of either running or turning, he instead collapsed sideways, smacked his head against the wall, and got to think about how terrible a blacksmith Mattrax employed if these were the best helmets he could produce.

“Will?” said Joeth, reaching the staggering pair. “Who the piss is Will?”

Finally Will found his tongue. “Me?” he said. “I'm nobody.” The other soldiers had clearly all hated Bevvan. Joeth's reluctance to be there interacting with them was writ large on his pinched, weaselly face. If he could, he would make this another pitiable nonevent.

“Fucking right.” Joeth spat a stream of brown phlegm onto the ground at his feet and turned to walk away.

“No,” Bevvan persisted, because apparently he was some Hallow-spawned demon dressed up in the skin of a bumbling imbecile, “Will. You remember. From the other night. We took his farm and were going to put him in debtors' jail. And then he ran into the barn and we set it on fire. And Kurr kept telling us how he was going to kill him. He'd burned his face and was terribly upset. But look! We didn't kill him! And he's enlisted! I mean, isn't that a funny coincidence?”

Joeth, it turned out, was not as stupid as Bevvan. It wasn't that surprising. Will used to own stools that weren't as stupid as Bevvan.

He got almost an entire stride before Joeth caught him by the shoulder and threw him to the ground. Will kicked out hard, felt a satisfying crunch as his heel connected with something hard, and then a less satisfying thump, as a wailing Bevvan collapsed on top of him.

“Joeth!” he howled. “What are you—?”

“He's not a fucking soldier, you dim-witted son of Cois. He was condemned to debtors' prison and burned off half of Kurr's face. We tend not to enlist fugitives. If we tended not to enlist idiots then arseholes like him might not sneak in here to get up to whatever the fuck he's been up to.”

Joeth, it turned out, was not a mumbler. Indeed he shouted this into Bevvan's tear-streaked face with almost perfect diction, and at considerable volume. He attracted considerable attention. By the time Will had fought free of Bevvan's weight, several pairs of hands were ready to help him to his feet. And then to help him slam face-first into the wall. And then to hold his hands at an excruciating angle behind his back while they were bound together.

Conversation had failed. Fleeing had failed. Will could only hope that when it came to dying painfully he would prove himself equally inept.

Always a light sleeper, Lette—who was at that moment sandwiched between a gear the size of a wagon wheel and a chain thicker than her own waist—had rarely been pleased to hear the sound of snoring. Balur was a snorer. His mouth would flop open as he slept, and from the back of his throat would emerge a sound that she could only liken to two mountains making love. A guttural gasping rasp that sawed through her mind and erased sleep from the list of options that the night held for her. She had once trekked an additional mile through a kobold-infested forest just to escape the sound.

This snore was different, though. This was a deeper, rumbling sound, like fresh earth settling itself. It made the rock reverberate around her, deep and sonorous. It was the sound of a dragon snoring.

Mattrax was drugged up to his eyeballs.

Slowly, with exaggerated care, Lette began to move. She had spent the first hour of her seclusion learning how to navigate the portcullis lock in the dark, charting out crawl spaces, gaps in the pressure plate's mechanics. The next hour she had spent firming up her understanding of the mechanism, its operation, its critical junctures, its weak points. Then she had waited. She had expected to have heard Quirk's and Will's voices. But there had been simply the sound of Mattrax moving around, huffing and grunting to himself in injured tones. What in Toil's name a dragon rolling in gold and food had to complain about escaped her, but at least the fat sack of fire had shown no sign of suspicion. All the job had really required so far was flexibility and patience.

Neither was she worried about the blow Balur had taken in the earlier confrontation. She had seen him shake off worse. The Batarran giant they once fought had literally picked him up and used him as a club to try to smash her. Right up until Balur had gotten an arm free, torn off the giant's thumbnail, and used it to slit the giant's wrist. Sailing a hundred yards or so into some trees was eminently survivable.

No, what worried her was that Balur's part of the plan had already gone awry and he was the one other member of their current team who had professional experience. Now she was relying on a university professor and an angry farmer to keep her safe from being roasted alive.

What if Mattrax was
not
drugged? What if he was simply asleep? Rumor had it that dragons could detect the removal of even a single coin from their stockpile. Lette had her doubts about that, but removing several sacks full of gold and jewels could definitely tip the balance against them.

So she moved slowly, soundlessly, letting one movement flow into another—a slow, sinuous unfurling of her body as she emerged into the cave and the night.

She stood stock still—a shadow among shadows—and took stock of the cave. She had only glimpsed its contours in the mad dash to hide. It was larger than she had expected, the floor smooth and sandy. The bulk of the cavern was curled away from the portcullis, so she could see neither Mattrax nor his pile of gold, only a faint red-yellow glow smudging through the deepening shadows.

She herself stood near the cave entrance, within arm's reach of the portcullis. Moonlight spilled between the iron beams, painting a chessboard on the floor before her. There were only two guards. That was a stroke of luck, at least. There had been far more earlier. Two guards simplified things considerably.

Moving at an almost imperceptible pace, she crossed the mouth of the cave. Her feet were silent on the sandy floor. Her shadow fell away from the guards. The rumble of Mattrax's snores stayed constant. Neither guard turned around.

She let a knife drop into each hand. She cocked one arm. She threw.

The blade whistled between the grille of the portcullis and landed with a solid thwack in the back of the first guard's neck. He dropped with a slight gurgle, and the heavy thump of lifeless limbs.

The second knife was already in her hand. She cocked her arm once more.

“Cois's cock!” The second guard shrieked, jumped almost half a yard. Lette tracked her with ease.

Her?

She hadn't had much time to observe Mattrax's forces, but he seemed as blinkeredly misogynistic as the armies belonging to most rulers she'd met.

And didn't she recognize that voice?

“Quirk?” she whispered.

“Lette?”

It
was
Quirk. Lette could even make out the bloodstains she had made when stealing the woman's armor. But…

“What in the name of the Hallows are you doing
outside
the cave?” she said. “Wasn't the whole plan that you'd be hidden in here helping me move the gold until Firkin and Balur arrived with the wagon?”

Quirk hesitated. Lette gathered breath for a whispered harangue. Then she noticed the other woman's shaking hands, her ragged breathing. Quirk kept looking over at the dead guard, kept opening and closing her fists.

“It's okay,” Lette said. She needed Quirk calm and functional. This wasn't the end of the world. She could get Quirk inside easily enough. Then another thought struck her. She looked over at the body.

“Wait…” she managed. “Will?”

Quirk shook her head vehemently. “No. No,” she said. “He's trapped inside.”

“Trapped?” That was not the sort of word Lette liked to hear when in the middle of a job.

“That's not what I meant.” Quirk shook her head with the sort of violence Lette usually reserved for jobs that required particular prejudice.

“Maybe,” she said, “you should start at the beginning.”

So Quirk did. Then she jumped to the end. Then to some point in the story halfway through, and from there leapt about like some deranged jackrabbit until finally Lette could piece the whole mosaic of disaster together.

“But is Mattrax actually drugged?” she asked finally. Quirk had proven elusive on this one point.

Quirk worried her hands several times. Lette cranked up the intensity of her glare several notches. If Quirk couldn't manage calm, then cowed would be a close enough approximation.

“I don't know,” Quirk said miserably.

“And is Will inside this cave?”

“I don't know,” Quirk said again, equally miserably.

Lette clenched her jaw tight and did not say a number of things that she would have liked to.

“Right,” she said eventually. “Well, in that case, the first thing to do is to get this portcullis up. You're sure there are no other soldiers about?”

Quirk shook her head. “They seemed stretched a bit thin after Mattrax killed off the previous guards. They just put the two of us down here.”

“Okay. Let me get back down in the mechanism so I can open up this portcullis. That way if everything goes to shit, at least I have a way out of here.” And without waiting for a response, she slipped down the hole back into the portcullis's inner workings. She wriggled forward until she found the fist-size gear she had identified earlier. Five swift blows with the hilt of her dagger and it fell out of alignment.

She threw herself backward as, around her, the mechanism blazed to life. Cogs whirled, chains shrieked, and counterweights fell with a resounding crash. A moment after it was all over, Lette heard Quirk's shriek as a brief punctuation to the whole event. Alone in the darkness, she permitted herself a roll of her eyes.

Then she waited. Waited for the roar. For the crash of Mattrax's feet as he descended upon the gate. For the heat of his flames roasting the rock around her.

But all she heard was the slow, steady rumble of his snores.

She smiled. Despite it all, something had actually gone right.